I get asked this question a lot in interviews, and it’s one of those wooly type questions that people like to ask and get a predictable rehearsed response back.

Until very recently, I didn’t know what the response should be, after all, isn’t everything complex until you understand it?

The interviewers are probably reflecting on their own systems which may look simple, but may have grown over time. The best response is to take any project you’ve worked on, and talk about the number of different sub-components that were there, how you looked at it from a high level view from a clients perspective, and the low level from a developers perspective.